I never liked fall. Yes, it is pretty to look at. But I believed that, every year anew, it was the icy cold and darkness of gloomy months that made trees shiver and robbed them of their precious leaves. And I love trees. They are beautiful creatures; strong and resilient, wise, mighty and calm. To me, fall was not much more but a time to grieve over lost sunshine and warmth, a vexing reminder of life’s transience, the announcement of months upon months of deadly frost.

Then, I learnt that trees aren’t involuntarily bereft of their glory — they decide. When light and temperature reach that moment, they know it is time, so they choose to slowly and graciously rid themselves of their leaves. Without the colorful baggage to worry about, they save enough strength throughout winter to care for the rest of themselves and stay perfectly healthy and alive.

This means that, when October draws to a close and the first inklings of snow hang in the distant air, the rustling of fallen gold is not a reminder of death; it is a reminder of life. It is a reminder that the world out there knows that winter is coming, but it is faithfully turning its mind towards spring. It wants to live. With unwavering determination it already takes care that it will bloom again, and it has done so for thousands of years.

Suddenly, autumn no longer calls for melancholy. Fall is a reassuring proof that life trumps death. That everything passes. That even in the midst of apparent decline, the seed for the next explosion of color and life and warmth is always already imagined. Even the deepest of winters already contains the vibrant summer lying ahead in all of its light-flooded force.

7 thoughts on “The Secret of October Trees”

:) How wonderful, I am grateful to know your heart got a bit toastier <3 Thanks for letting me know. I hope apart from the October cold all is well…? Thank you also for the Camus piece; it is something my mother once quoted during a very rough patch and I never understood until just now when you connected the dots :) Cheers to poetry!

Oh my, I wrote a long reply and it got lost. The crux of it was that words make sense when they map onto an experience or feeling we’ve had. Though I had read Camus’ words before, it clicked upon reading this piece. <3

“My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.